Our good friends, Matt and Lisa, hosted a lovely celebration for their daughter, Sophie’s First Communion. Sophie has a nut allergy so finding a nut-free bakery is a BIG challenge. Since Archana loves to bake, Lisa asked Archana to make the cake for the party. The cake was simple, beautiful and delicious!
Sophie loves chocolate. We decided to bake a nut-free chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream frosting. We checked that all our ingredients were not produced at factories that mix nut and nut-free products. It’s rather amazing at how often big corporations commingle nut and nut-free products, so definitely read your labels CAREFULLY!
Lisa gave us an adorable communion statue to place on top of the cake. We kept the rest of the cake decorations simple: blue ombre frosting and a shell border. Sophie loved the chocolate cake, baked especially for her.
“Wisdom is a sacred communion.”––Victor Hugo
Chocolate Cake
Adapted From Martha Stewart
Ingredients
- 3 Cups Flour
- 3 Cups Granulated Sugar
- 1 1/2 Cups Unsweetened Dutch-Process Cocoa Powder
- 1 TBS Baking Soda
- 1 1/2 TSP Baking Powder
- 1 1/2 TSP Coarse Salt
- 4 Eggs
- 1 1/2 Cups Low-Fat Buttermilk
- 1 1/2 Cups Warm Water
- 1/2 Cup plus 2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
- 2 TSP Vanilla Extract
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees
- Butter an 8-inch and 6-inch round cake pan
- Sift flour, granulated sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and coarse salt into the bowl of a mixer
- Beat on low speed until just combined
- Raise speed to medium, and add eggs, buttermilk, warm water, oil, and vanilla and beat until smooth, about 3 minutes
- Divide batter among pans and make cupcakes with the excess batter (original recipe filled 3 – 9 inch pans
- Bake until cakes are set and a toothpick inserted into the center of each comes out clean, about 25-30 minutes.
- Let cool in pans set on a wire rack for 15 minutes
- Turn out cakes onto racks, and let cool completely
- Place on a cake board and use Toba Garrett’s Decorator’s Buttercream to frost the cake
- Use Wilton 1M tip to pipe shell border
Recipes From This Party
Chocolate Cake: Martha Stewart
Buttercream Frosting: Toba Garrett
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Stand Mixer: Kitchen Aid Tilt Head; Kitchen Aid Bowl Lift (we prefer the bowl lift model, but it’s more expensive)
Cupcake Carrier: Wilton (includes cupcake and mini-cupcake pans)
This cake is so cute- I love how you decorated it.
Oh my goodness that cake is SO CUTE! Thanks so much for sharing this with us!
Great job on the cake! And it doesn’t get much better than pizza and chocolate cake for a kid-friendly celebration. My boys would be perfectly content with that!
omg this cake!!! Looks gorgeous!!! I still remember the cake my parents ordered for my holy communion, looked amazing…
What a gorgeous and yummy cake! It turned out so awesome!
Kileen
It’s the same thing here. Holy Communions are really a big thing esp since we’re a Catholic country. It’s great that they were able to celebrate this.
I love the cake, it looks and sounds delicious! Congrats to this pretty little girl on her Holy Communion! May God bless her.
Wow, that is cool that you made that cake yourself – it looks superb and you are sure that there are no nuts in it 🙂
she must have had a lot of fun! and you baking the cake yourself is amazing❤ for sure she loved it
The cake is so tastefully made! The kids are loving it ! I loved reading your post thanks again!
That cake looks so cute! Thanks for sharing the recipe I need to try it!